The tracks of the 2000 archive

NASCAR sorts its ovals by length, and the sorting is not decorative. A short track is an oval under one mile, and most of them measure half a mile or less. An intermediate track runs from one to two miles, with the label most often reserved for the 1.5-mile ovals that did not appear in this archive. A superspeedway, in the modern sense of the word, is an oval of two miles or more. Road courses stand outside the oval system altogether: they turn both ways and are measured by the lap, not by the shape. The archive's ten tracks cover every one of these categories, which is part of what makes the eleven races worth keeping together.

Banking is the second measurement worth learning. A steeply banked turn lets a car carry speed through the corner because the track itself pushes back against the car. A flat turn forces the driver to lift, brake and turn the wheel, and it punishes a car that does not handle. Two tracks of the same length can race nothing alike once you compare the angles.

Daytona International Speedway opened on February 22, 1959, in Daytona Beach, Florida. It is a 2.5-mile tri-oval with 31 degrees of banking in the turns, 18 degrees through the tri-oval at the start-finish line and 3 degrees on the back straight. In 2000 the cars ran there with restrictor plates, metal plates fitted at the engine intake to choke airflow and cut horsepower. NASCAR made the plates permanent at Daytona and Talladega in 1988 after Bobby Allison's Buick went into the fence at Talladega during the 1987 Winston 500 at roughly 200 mph, tearing down close to 100 feet of fencing. Plates kept speeds in the 190 mph range instead of letting them climb past 240, and they kept the field in a pack, since no car had enough power to pull away. The Pepsi 400 of July 1, 2000, ran 160 laps for 400 miles. Jeff Burton won it and Dale Jarrett started from the pole, in a race that has been held on or around Independence Day since 1959.

Michigan International Speedway is the other superspeedway in the archive, and the contrast with Daytona is instructive. It is a two-mile D-shaped oval in Cambridge Township, Michigan, opened October 13, 1968, with 18 degrees of banking in the turns, 12 on the frontstretch and 5 on the back. Michigan is wide, and its infield holds three road-course layouts of 1.25, 2.25 and 3.5 miles drawn by Stirling Moss. Because Michigan did not run plates, the cars there had full power and spread out across the surface, so the racing rewarded engine builders and drivers who could find a lane the others missed. Tony Stewart won the Kmart 400 on June 11, 2000, and Rusty Wallace took the Pepsi 400 presented by Meijer on August 20 from Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s pole.

The three short tracks in the archive share a length class and little else. Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee, opened July 23, 1961, measures 0.533 miles and has been concrete since a 1992 repave. Its banking is a matter of record and of dispute: the track marketed its turns as 36 degrees for years, and Wikipedia records that the true figure before the 2007 reconfiguration was 30, with the 2007 work leaving progressive banking of 24 to 30 degrees. Either way, Bristol in 2000 was the steepest of the three short tracks here, and by that year the Kulwicki Tower had pushed capacity to about 147,000. Rusty Wallace won the goracing.com 500 there on August 26, 2000, from his own pole.

• Martinsville Speedway, Ridgeway, Virginia: 0.526 miles, 12 degrees in the turns and flat straights, open since September 1947. The corners are concrete in the lower lanes and asphalt above, which is why the place is called the paperclip. Tony Stewart won the NAPA Autocare 500 on October 1, 2000, from the pole.
• Richmond International Raceway, Richmond, Virginia: 0.75 miles, a D-shaped oval banked 14 degrees in the turns, 8 on the frontstretch and 2 on the back. The present layout dates from September 1988, and permanent lights went in during 1995. Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the Pontiac Excitement 400 on May 6, 2000, with Rusty Wallace on the pole.
• Bristol Motor Speedway, Bristol, Tennessee: 0.533 miles of concrete with the steepest turns of the three, described above.

Why do short tracks race the way they do? A full Winston Cup field on half a mile of pavement means the leader reaches slower cars within a few laps, and stays in traffic for the rest of the day. Brakes cook, and a driver who wants a position often has to take it with the bumper. Martinsville's flat corners reward a car that turns and stops. Bristol's banking lets the pack run close to flat out, so the lap times are quick and the wrecks are frequent. Richmond, with its three-quarter-mile length and moderate banking, sits between the two and offers more than one racing groove.

Dover Downs International Speedway, as it was named in 2000, opened March 8, 1969, in Dover, Delaware. It is a one-mile oval with 24 degrees of banking in the turns and 9 on the straights, and since 1995 the surface has been concrete. The nickname is the Monster Mile. Tony Stewart won the MBNA Platinum 400 on June 4, 2000, with Rusty Wallace on the pole. Phoenix International Raceway in Avondale, Arizona, opened January 4, 1964, and hosted its first Cup race on November 6, 1988, when Alan Kulwicki won. In 2000 it measured one mile, with a kink in the frontstretch known as the dogleg that dates to the original road course; a 2011 project pushed the dogleg out by 95 feet and lengthened the lap to 1.022 miles, so the current banking figures do not describe the 2000 track. Jeff Burton won the Checker Auto Parts/Dura Lube 500 there on November 5, 2000, from a Wallace pole.

New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon opened June 15, 1990. NASCAR scores the lap at 1.058 miles. In 2000 the turns carried 12 degrees of banking, a figure Wikipedia gives when describing the 2002 repave that cut it to 6 or 7 degrees and widened the turns by 12 feet. The place became the hardest story of the 2000 season. Adam Petty, 19, died there on May 12 in practice for a Busch Series race after his throttle stuck going into turn three and the car hit the outside wall almost head on. Kenny Irwin Jr. died in practice for the thatlook.com 300 on July 7, in nearly the same spot, with a stuck throttle again blamed. Tony Stewart won that July 9 race from Wallace's pole. When the series came back in September for the Dura Lube 300, NASCAR mandated restrictor plates, the first time the plate had been used at a track shorter than 2.5 miles; the plates trimmed about 10 mph, and Jeff Burton led all 300 laps.

North Carolina Speedway in Rockingham, called The Rock, opened October 27, 1965, and was known as North Carolina Motor Speedway until 1997. The 0.94-mile oval is banked 22 degrees in turns one and two, 25 in turns three and four and 8 on the straights. Its surface was famous for eating tires: the track periodically laid down sealant rather than repaving, and drivers complained as far back as 1977 that the sealed surface turned slick. A car that was fast on new tires and slow after 30 laps went backward in a hurry. Dale Jarrett won the Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn 400 on October 22, 2000, with Jeremy Mayfield on the pole. Rockingham held its last Cup race in 2004.

Watkins Glen International sits in Dix, New York, beside the village of Watkins Glen at the southern tip of Seneca Lake. The permanent circuit opened in 1956 and held the United States Grand Prix for twenty straight years, 1961 to 1980. NASCAR has used the 2.45-mile short course with its seven turns since the series returned in 1986, leaving the 3.45-mile Boot to the open-wheel and sports car series. On a road course the field turns right as well as left, shifts gears on every lap, brakes hard from high speed into slow corners, and cannot lean on banking at all. Setups that worked at Michigan the week before were useless. Steve Park won the Global Crossing @ The Glen on August 13, 2000, from Bobby Labonte's pole.

Ten tracks, four types, one rule: the surface under the car decides what kind of driver wins.

Read the eleven race pages with this list beside you and the results start to make sense. The plate race at Daytona went to a driver who stayed in the draft. The short tracks went to men who could take a hit and keep the fenders on. The Glen went to a driver who could brake and shift. That is the argument for keeping the practice sheets: they show who had the track figured out before the green flag.